"East Coker" & T. S. Eliot's "Raid on the Inarticulate"

As a call to arms, it's pretty muted. But it might be the best one I know. This is part five of "East Coker," the second of Eliot's Four Quartets (1940):

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

As a long-time resident of Somerville, Massachusetts, which sits adjacent to Harvard University and Harvard Square, I am required to be opinionated. Thus, this blog. You will encounter many of my concerns and enthusiasms here.